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SearchFuel.com Top 10 Reasons to Be Thankful

by ~ November 25th, 2008

The Thanksgiving season is upon us and as such, it’s time to step back and recount the things we are thankful for this year. There are many things the team here at Outrider is thankful for this year…

  1. Google pulling the plug on the Google/Yahoo! deal…as this does not represent the best interest of our clients.

  2. The return of Yahoo! Contextual placements as a way to test contextual networks without giving all your money to Google.

  3. Mobile is taking off, FINALLY!! 2009 is slated to be a big year for mobile.

  4. Fabulous entertainment and parties thrown by the search engines and our vendors.
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Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Features | No Comments >>

Is the SearchWiki Socially Misleading Us?

by ~ November 22nd, 2008

Today, some of you may have noticed that in conjunction with their organic listings, Google has implemented social ranking tools.  Now users have the power to promote, remove, comment or add a link to a page that they feel is more relevant for a particular search term.  This is similar to the social networking site, Digg where the first page results are based on the thumbs up or down votes cast by members.  The difference with the SearchWiki is that your vote is specific to your own secured user experience.

Doing a little research, I’ve found that while people can see the innate good in having this capability, many are skeptical and asking some of the same questions that I have…How long before this gesture to improve personalization will start to impact the overall natural listings and allow us to affect a site’s ranking based on this voting system?  If this becomes the case, then how do we keep Pandora’s Box from opening and giving companies a new space and opportunity to unethically push competitors further down in the search results?  If this is really about personalization of search, then why are comments made public? What is the real motivation behind this social engagement?  Will paid search be impacted at all?

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Filed under: Organic Search | No Comments >>

Is it Finally Time to See the Butterfly Take Off?

by ~ November 20th, 2008

With the unknown future of Yahoo’s stability, the recent grumblings over Google’s advantageous use of their power, and the inefficient technology of Ask, has the search world finally entered the Era of MSN?  This is quite the possibility when you give it some thought.

We know this has been a volatile year for the top four search engines.  Google, while still mighty, has seen some backlash for some of their recent enhancement choices.  While we love Ask and want them to succeed, it seems that their current company model doesn’t support the technological changes they need to make in order to gain a nice chunk of market share.  The stability and sureness of Yahoo as a whole is, simply put, not there.  All the while MSN’s been plugging away to make their user and advertiser experience better.

If you’ve been in the search space for the last 3 ½ years, you can probably remember the entrance of MSN into the ranks.  Everyone was excited, but it didn’t take long for that excitement to change to irritation.  Many of us felt adCenter was launched before Microsoft was ready to support it and back it up with the technology it needed to be successful.  For example:

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Filed under: Paid Search | 2 Comments >>

The Yang Legacy

by ~ November 18th, 2008

Last  night, Yahoo announced that Jerry Yang would end his second tour of duty as CEO. Called out of retirement during the Summer of 2007 to help Yahoo adapt to life after the Terry Semel regime, to say that the 2nd Yang dynasty did not  go well is an understatement. The decisions Yang presided over to reject the Microsoft take over bid will likely define Yang, but should they ultimately be his legacy?

The day of Yang’s resignation, a story ran in Advertising Age citing the numerous reasons Madison Avenue and marketers alike find Yahoo a compelling buy on their plans. Whether Yahoo remains independent or eventually gets acquired, Yang’s legacy has taken quite the hit in the last 12-18 months. So has his personal net worth as a result of the plummeting Yahoo stock price. It seems “Yang the founder” could not separate his love of Yahoo from the function “Yang the CEO” found himself in to make the best decision for the company and its shareholders.

Was Yahoo being undervalued? Whether you think yes or no, it seems unlikely that a proud parent, one who bleeds Purple, would ever feel otherwise. And that, right or wrong, now becomes the Yang legacy overshadowing the Decade of Yahoo as the Home Page of the Internet, a title only possible because of David Filo and Jerry Yang. A title which now, like CEO, no longer belongs to Yang and his beloved Yahoo.

Filed under: Features | No Comments >>

Are You Squeezing the Most Out of Your Marketing Campaigns?

by ~ November 17th, 2008

I’ve decided not to open my monthly investment statements. To be honest, I just don’t want to know how much of a hit our retirement and kids’ college savings accounts have taken over the last month. But even without the concrete dollar figures, it seems hard to escape the global economic pity party. Despite any real change to our income or expenses, my household is tightening its belt. We’re paying far more attention to our spending. Even with declining gas prices, we’ve talked ourselves out of holiday trips to see family across the country. Of course, corporations have fallen into this mindset as well. There’s no shortage of business news reporting layoffs, hiring freezes and budget cuts.

But as any coupon-cutting mom knows, it’s not always about spending less. It’s about getting more for your money. Savvy shoppers know where the bargains are and are methodical about planning any shopping campaign. I think companies should take a cue from these shopping champs and ask “how can we spend smarter?”

Search is known as a highly effective marketing channel, but far too many companies are leaving opportunities on the table. Just like your mom would tell you to squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube, marketers should be asking whether they have squeezed all the value out of their campaigns. Here are three areas where marketers can spend smarter:

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Filed under: Organic Search | 1 Comment >>

A Look Back at Barack Obama and Social Media

by ~ November 13th, 2008

John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon brought in the first televised debate to presidential campaigning in the US in 1960. President-elect Barack Obama embraced the next step in campaigning in 2008 – social media.

Barack Obama’s campaign decided to spearhead the digital social space and it has paid off. I’m not saying that he won the election because of his Twitter feed or MySpace page, I’m just saying that it didn’t hurt to connect with younger voters in their comfort zone – the Web.

During his entire campaign, Obama made a point to connect with his supporters via My.BarackObama.com. My.BarackObama.com is a community online blogging space for Obama supporters. People could personalize the interface and post comments and videos conveying their opinions about the election on Obama’s personal site. Talk about feeling connected with your candidate! The online Obama community would interact and support one another, allowing a person to really be connected and devoted to the candidate.

In the blogosphere, Obama outranked John McCain in mentions.  Frederic Lardinois, a reporter for Read Write Web – a blog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis – writes:

“While overall blog mentions of Obama and McCain varied greatly during the last year (and we can’t say if those were positive or negative posts), close to 500 million blog postings mentioned him since the beginning of the conventions at the end of August. During the same time period, only about 150 million blog posts mentioned McCain (though it would also be interesting to see similar statistics for Governor Palin as well).”

Meanwhile, Obama wasn’t the only one taking advantage of social media tools during the campaign. CNN kept in touch with “need-to-know-ers” via Twitter, sending up-to-the-minute tweets to followers all over the nation. For those that were interested in more than just the Tweet headline, links were provided to the relevant article on cnn.com.

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Filed under: Social Media | 1 Comment >>

The Red Headed Step-Child of Search

by ~ November 10th, 2008

Friday, November 5th, 2008, Search Engine Land posted an article discussing what many of us in the SEO space already know; that Fortune 500 companies are not well represented in the organic space.  They reported findings from a study done by Conductor, a New York based search/analytics agency.  What was determined is astonishing…again, no surprise to most of us who live and breathe SEO, but astonishing nonetheless.  Conductor found that:

  • 72% of Fortune 500 companies have very low to non-existent visibility for their most advertised keywords
  • 20% of Fortune 500 companies have low to mid presence
  • 8% of Fortune 500 companies studied showed mid to strong presence for their most advertised keywords

Why is SEO the red headed step-child of Search?

In my experience here at Outrider, I’ve found that the greatest challenge presented to SEO’ers is getting clients to own and commit to achieving success in the organic space.  As an agency, we tout the idea and proven value of approaching search holistically and using the historical data from paid to influence organic and vice a versa, but how often do search strategists and advertisers really reap the benefits?  Clients at large see the added value and necessity of attaining a visible presence in both the paid and organic space, but because of the cross-functional demands of SEO implementation, i.e. Marketing, Corporate Communications, IT, Legal,. advertisers’ commitment and participation falters.

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Filed under: Organic Search | No Comments >>

Marketing: Out with the OLD…In with the NEW!

by ~ November 6th, 2008

On a recent trip to the book store, I stumbled across The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott.  Thumbing through the different chapters, I started reflecting back to my college days where I learned the OLD rules.  It is amazing just how much has changed since college.  Shoot, when I graduated, Google had just launched and search was just beginning to take off.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an eye opener into how these fields have changed. In the beginning of the book, Scott mentions how marketing was considered advertising.  Remember those advertising courses that taught us advertising was marketing and marketing was advertising?  Back then, I questioned why there would be two different courses if that were the case.  The professor’s response was at the end of the day you are essentially doing the same thing…BRANDING!  While marketing hasn’t changed much conceptually, the way we market is continuously evolving.
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Filed under: Features | 1 Comment >>

Share for Success or Share to Exceed

by ~ November 5th, 2008

Sharing your pail and shovel in the proverbial sandbox can lead to building the biggest and best sandcastle on the beach. Don’t you want to give your client the best possible “castle”? Show the competition that we have what it takes to give and be the best. If we share and work as a team, we can only succeed.  Successful integration means all components – search, online, traditional – working together to maximize marketing goals.

As discussed in our previous post on SearchFuel, “Let’s All Play in the Sandbox Together,” it takes multiple steps to create and maintain a successful search marketing integration. Over the next several posts from the two of us, we will touch on each step and try to keep the sand out of our shoes while building our castle. Planning, communication, budgeting, goal setting, messaging and building/maintaining relationships are all important steps in working together.

Let’s start with the foundation: PLANNING!

This is where it all starts. Getting together to understand the advertiser’s business goals for the year, plan your annual campaign strategy and gather ideas are key. Without planning you won’t know when to start digging the moat, where to put the draw bridge, where you pen your pigs. You get the idea, there is nothing too small or insignificant to discuss. Timing is everything and you need to work together for the better of your client and the account.

Speaking of timing…when to start integration discussions is an important part of the planning stage.  How about now?  ‘09 planning is underway for most advertisers, so what better time is there to start the discussion than the present.

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Filed under: Features | No Comments >>

Synchronization in Search

by ~ November 3rd, 2008

This post was written by Chris Copeland and published on Media Post Search Insider, Friday, October 31, 2008.

Last month I wrote a column about integration in media. Everyone loves the concept of integration. Advertisers love to tout an integrated effort, agencies love to sell the integrated model to those same advertisers and consumers theoretically love the cohesive nature of which their day is infused with oh so pertinent marketing.

Then, being the contrarian that I can be, I suggested that in fact integration was more hype than substance. I would suggest that integration today is more about making sure that when a TV spot runs, that the banners or search listings you have show the same creative. Almost two years ago, I wrote a column for Search Insider about search relevancy when viewed through the eyes of the television viewer who happens to be online while watching a sporting event. The results were not good to say the least. And yet, two years later, we are still touting that type of integration as a success.

A few weeks ago, one of our business units, Outrider, was recognized with two awards from the DMA as part of the International ECHO program. One of the awards was for Showtime Networks for Best Use of Digital Media. The campaign for their series, “The Tudors,” did a few unique things including offbeat keyword buys and drive to social experiences, amongst its many attributes. The campaign won its first award nearly 14 months ago so, for it to still be recognized and in such a prominent non-search category is a testament to its strategy and success.

However, it got me wondering about this notion of synchronicity. One of the hallmark elements of the campaign was the real-time management of the program during two key periods. One was naturally while the show was airing in real time. Keyword buys and creative were focused on those doing just what the NBC Olympic viewers I mentioned in my integration in media column were doing: watching TV and surfing the web at the same time. This segment of audience has a very different level of interest and intent because they are being primed by the most expensive selling tool an advertiser has, their brand owned content. Supplementing that experience and continuing it with more brand-owned content is a fulfillment that extends beyond integration.

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Filed under: Features | No Comments >>